The Hiroshima Carp and Orix Buffaloes happily greased the slopes for their skidding opponents on Friday, while the teams with the two best early records in the CL locked horns in a scintillating pitchers’ duel, while the weatherman gave a pitcher’s arm some extra rest.
Friday’s games
Swallows 3, Tigers 1: At Koshien Stadium, Jose Osuna and Tetsuto Yamada broke up a classic pitchers’ duel, bringing Yakult from behind after the Tigers only run scored thanks to their only hit through six innings off Yasuhiro Ogawa, a fluke first-inning triple right fielder Domingo Santana couldn’t see in a driving rain.
Tuesday, we had more mashing from Japan’s home run monster, although he twice failed to hit his fifth grand slam of the season in another Swallows marathon, and a top three vs bottom three set of series in the Pacific League.
Hawks 4, Eagles 2: At Fukuoka Dome, Hideto Asamura opened the scoring with a first-inning solo homer, his 24th, off 41-year-old lefty Tsuyoshi Wada (5-4), who allowed two runs over five innings to win his second straight start. Eagles starter Ryota Takinaka (2-8) gave up back-to-back singles to open the first as the Hawks tied it 1-1. Back-to-back one-out singles in the third set up Yuki Yanagita for an RBI single, and Masaki Mimori tripled in two with two outs in the fourth.
